It’s a common life lesson that we sometimes have to take the good with the bad. The new fifth-generation iPod touch may be the thinnest and flashiest yet, but it has a serious downgrade that was only discovered recently: no ambient light sensor.
GigaOm‘s Kevin Tofel was awestruck when he originally received his new iPod touch. It wasn’t until he went outside to check the mail that he noticed its obvious shortcoming.
Typically, I keep my device brightness at low levels while indoors but still use auto-brightness, mainly to save on battery life. So when I went for the mail this past Saturday while reading an article on the new iPod, the screen quickly became unreadable when I stepped outside. I figured I either didn’t have the auto-brightness setting on or it wasn’t working — actually, that was my first thought: The sensor was broken. Unfortunately, since I couldn’t read the screen, it was impossible to even find the Settings icon.
Upon further investigation once Tofel returned inside, he discovered that there was only a manual slider to control brightness. The auto-brightness setting, which automatically adjusts the brightness of the screen based on the brightness in the room around you, was gone. A quick visit to Apple’s iPod touch product page confirmed Tofel’s fear. No mention of an ambient light sensor anywhere.
One can assume that Apple removed this feature to cut down costs and save some room. For you, it means you’ll have to constantly manually adjust your screen. Your poor eyes and your poor battery.
Source: GigaOm
Image Credit: Techdeville
